News flash: Private cloud economics can offer more cost efficiency than public cloud pricing structures. Private, or on-premises, cloud solutions can be more cost-effective than public cloud options, according to a report by 451 Research and Canonical. That conclusion counters the notion that public cloud platforms traditionally are more cost-efficient than private infrastructures. [More...]

Oracle Commerce is the industry's top-ranked commerce solution that powers the world's best brands, and delivers a consistent, personalized cross-channel customer experience. Oracle Commerce offers a complete commerce software platform that enables you to deliver a personalized customer buying experience across all customer touchpoints, including the web, contact center, mobile devices, social media, physical stores, and more.

Absolutely. Depending on what you want your e-commerce store to do or look like, you can choose from a variety of available WooCommerce themes. Once you've chosen a theme, you can begin to customize it within the "customizer" section of your WordPress dashboard. This will allow you to make simple changes like adding your personal logo or changing the background and font. Coding knowledge is not a requirement for using WooCommerce, however for users who know basic HTML or CSS, customization can be taken to a whole new level. We recommend that beginners to WooCommerce choose a theme that best fits their needs and then learn how to customize it further through our knowledge base articles or community forums. As your customization skills increase, you will be excited by all the possibilities your WooCommerce online store has available to leverage.

The first step to starting an eCommerce business is deciding what products you’re going to sell. Finding a profitable idea can be hard work, so be prepared to do some serious digging and thinking. It’s essential that you choose products with healthy margins that will allow you to turn a profit and scale the business in the future. Once you know what you want to sell, you’ll need to decide how and where you’re going to source the products. The four main methods of sourcing products and inventory are making, manufacturing, wholesale and dropshipping.
Showcase your products and drive sales from your Facebook Business Page with the free Facebook for #WooCommerce extension. Sync your entire catalog with a click, and reach people after they’ve visited your website with dynamic, relevant ads on Facebook.https://woocommerce.com/products/facebook/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=WooCommerce …

The Nexternal eCommerce Platform is a PCI Service Level 1 hosted system that enables brands to sell products directly to consumers or other businesses online, in person, or over the phone. The platform has been continuously evolving since 1999 and has features that will not be found in simpler applications. The software is a single database solution that provides a holistic overview of customer activity regardless of the channel the purchaser is utilizing. All orders can be managed in a web base Order Management System that is integrated with the major shipping carriers, allowing for efficient order processing. Our newest application, TrueCommerce Engage is a mobile point of sale solution that, uses the same database as the online catalog.

Any update on this for 2017? As I’m currently on Volusion (for many years) and being forced to switch to their responsive system. I know this is rather a necessity. But as such, I might as well now compare to other platforms. So, in your evaluation of Volusion, were you basing the performance and SEO ratings on a newer, responsive site or everything on their platform? I know I need to move to response. But I’m hesitant to lose SEO traction in the process. Any hints in that regard as we lean into migrating forward?

Bluehost makes it easy to get started with WooCommerce web hosting. Simply choose the hosting plan that is right for your website needs, and then create or add your existing domain. We will automatically install WooCommerce on top of your WordPress website while also providing a free WooCommerce SSL to keep your site and transactions secure. Setup takes only a few minutes and then you can begin selecting a theme for your online store. Shortly after you've selected a WooCommerce theme, you can begin adding your products and payment information.

We’ve rated the top ecommerce platforms at least four stars out of five in our ecommerce comparison chart. You don’t need any coding knowledge to build a stylish online store. This is not true of more complex self-hosted ecommerce software like WordPress and Magento (if you want to find out more about these advanced tools, visit our guide on best ecommerce software).

Weebly’s range of price plans and various features make it great value for money. You can easily scale up through the price plans as your store grows, but for large or fast-growing stores, it’s not the best option. Weebly is developing its ecommerce focus and releasing some promising updates. With Square now opening up Weebly’s ecommerce abilities, we definitely recommend watching this space.

I think it would be super if there was a way to have a shopping cart feature that worked across a Wordpress Multi-site installation. What I mean by this is that a user could add a product on say shop1.domain.com and then navigate to shop2.domain.com and again add a product and then at anytime check out and pay. This would be a super powerful feature and something I think alot of people would have an interest in. Anyone else want to join in on this. MarketPress here http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/e-commerce has this feature but really woocommerce considering the themes available and its… more

Too bad its pricing is a bit outdated. While you get a decent number of features in its starter plan, it is limited at 4,000 visitors (actually it’s limited on bandwidth, but it does the math for you). It’s also limited at 100 products, which equals 20 visits per product. That’s not enough for a decent conversion rate. Even when you pay $129.99 a month you only get 90,000 visitors, which isn’t that much. Its High Traffic Plus plan will give you up to 500,000 visitors (at a staggering cost of $499.99/month).

Every time you hit the "download" button, a new SINGLE USE license for that particular song, on that particular project, is generated. So, if you’re going to use a song multiple times for different projects, just hit the download button again, for however many times you use it. This does two things: (1) It keeps you legal with licensing on all of your projects, and (2) it allows us to pay our amazing artists properly.

Shopify Plus is making enterprise ecommerce simple by providing high growth and high volume merchants multi-channel commerce software without the headaches. We empower merchants to sell online and off, across social channels like Facebook and Instagram and through marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Engineered for scalability and reliability, Shopify Plus is driving massive disruption in the traditional enterprise landscape by giving customers the power and capabilities they need to grow and succeed without the headaches, costs, lengthy timelines and BS of the traditional enterprise options. Shopify Plus works with the largest, most innovative companies in the world like Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, Budweiser, Red Bull and many more.

International e-commerce has become more pervasive and sophisticated in recent years. In 2017, 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online. During the same year, global e-retail sales amounted to $2.3 trillion, and that figure could grow to $4.48 trillion by 2021. E-commerce providers must continue to innovate to ensure they take full advantage of opportunities outside their home market. [More...]

Version 1.2.0 of WooCommerce Blocks is now available as a feature plugin. It’s the easiest, most flexible way to display your products on posts and pages! Using the original “Products Block”, your displayed products can be filtered by category, sale status, or a variety of other fields. You can even make a custom list of handpicked products to display.

Hey Darren; that’s really a fantastic article! I assume you’ve put a lot of effort into that but believe me that’s the best comparison of eCommerce platforms I’ve seen so far 🙂 One question popped up on my mind. Do you believe that an eCommerce platform lacks certain competencies if a merchant using that platform needs external apps to support his/her store? I work for an app developer company – so I may be subjective in that sense – but for me eCommerce apps add a lot of value on top of the standard offering of the platforms. For instance, we provide AI powered personalization for the eCommerce websites. An eCommerce platform’s development team do not need to bother creating these competencies in house – and they may not succeed – as this is not their expertise. I’d love to hear about your thoughts 🙂
We are in talks with a few organizations who have very substantial interest and whose values align with ours. As negotiations continue, I may write more updates here as we move along and may be able to announce a new parent org for FMA in the coming weeks. Nothing is set in stone though so we still face shutdown, and if you have questions or want to help, please contact us using the Closure Comment form (at the end of this blog post).
The DoJ has revealed an unsealed indictment of eight defendants for crimes related to their involvement in widespread digital advertising fraud. The DoJ alleges the eight individuals were behind two global schemes, 3ve and Methbot, which stole tens of millions of dollars through a scam that used fake Web traffic and fake websites to reap ad view revenue from unwitting advertisers. [More...]

How do they really know? That's the question that immediately comes to mind in reviewing the top-level data from Voxpro's recent survey of customers and their relationship with chatbots. The data show that 68 percent of consumers haven't used chatbots to contact a brand. About 1,000 people answered the survey. How reliable is that number, though? I'm not disrespecting Voxpro -- just the opposite. [More...]

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One of the biggest advantages of listing your products on Amazon is that you can use its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program, which handles shipping for you. WP-Lister Lite for Amazon supports that feature, but keep in mind that if you use it, you’ll need to direct any purchases made on your WooCommerce store to your Amazon listings. To get started, you’ll want to check out an online guide to configuring both platforms to work together.

At WP Engine, we are proud to host a number of ecommerce sites. We combine a dedicated work environment with a toolkit for WooCommerce integration. We will protect your ecommerce shop when you need protection most; you won’t need to worry about high traffic conflicting with your sales revenue. Our digital experience platform will provide your business with SEO ready performance, improved mobile UX, and third party integrations (Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.) to integrate stores running on other platforms with WordPress.

Although retailers are slating some outstanding deals for Black Friday, the shine of the once-feverish shopping day has diminished, as product discounts have started to appear earlier and earlier in the holiday season. Discounts formerly found exclusively on Black Friday -- and on its online equivalent, Cyber Monday -- gradually have migrated to earlier in the fall. [More...]

The rate of growth of the number of internet users in the Arab countries has been rapid – 13.1% in 2015. A significant portion of the e-commerce market in the Middle East comprises people in the 30–34 year age group. Egypt has the largest number of internet users in the region, followed by Saudi Arabia and Morocco; these constitute 3/4th of the region’s share. Yet, internet penetration is low: 35% in Egypt and 65% in Saudi Arabia.[53]

The Mozilla Foundation is expanding a campaign begun last year to help consumers buy safe, secure connected toys and mobile gadgets this holiday season. Mozilla's 2018 edition Privacy Not Included buyers' guide offers an assessment of the privacy and security qualities of 70 products, ranging from connected teddy bears and smart speakers to game consoles and smart home gadgets. [More...]
When Last.fm was initially created in 2002, it functioned as an internet radio station in a similar fashion to Pandora and iHeartRadio. In 2005, however, the site adopted Audioscrobbler, a music recommendation system that collects data from dozens of media players and music streaming websites to craft individual user profiles that reflect musical taste and listening habits. Last.fm has now “scrobbled” info from nearly 100 billion plays, which total more than 7 million years’ worth of listening.